role in the film, which she gladly accepted. But due to Walter Legge, well-known recording producer of EMI and husband of Dame Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Della Casa was replaced by Schwarzkopf for the film (a reverse of the 1954 Salzburg Festival production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, where Schwarzkopf sang in the performances, but was replaced by Della Casa for the film production). Shocked, although she sang the scheduled performances of the season (the Marschallin and Countess Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro), she would never sing there again. When asked several times subsequently to do so, she declined, replying: "No, sir, Salzburg für mich ist gestorben." ("No, sir, for me, Salzburg is dead.") She surprised her audiences by singing the title role in Salome at the Bavarian State Opera House in Munich in 1961. Colleague Inge Borkh said that Della Casa was "very sexy ... because she did not seek to be so!" ("Sie war sehr sexy... unbewusst!")<ref>Interview with Inge Borkh in Lisa Della Casa: Liebe einer Diva, Porträt der Sopranistin”, German documentary film, 2008.</ref> From this time onward, she took few dramatic parts in Italian operas, succeeding notably as Desdemona in Verdi's Otello and the title role in Puccini's Tosca, but finally returned to lyric parts in Mozart and Richard Strauss operas. In 1964, when Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (now both her colleague and rival at the Vienna State Opera House) made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera of New York as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Della Casa sang Octavian. Anneliese Rothenberger and Rolf Gerard attested that, contrary to Bing's and the public's desire for scandal, no hard feelings between the two sopranos were apparent during this period. Gerard, who was working at the time with famous Met director Rudolf Bing, called the latter a "publicity genius". Other significant roles were Cleopatra in Handel's [Julius Caesar], the Countess in Strauss's Capriccio, Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo, and the female roles in Gottfried von Einem's Der Prozess. Later years Della Casa admitted she did not like the "music business", with its intrigues and vanities. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau said of her that after hearing a performance he was astonished and wanted to congratulate her, but she was still so involved in her role that she never heard his compliments. She smoked during her career, with defiance: "Why not?" ("Warum nicht?") In a 1963 BBC television interview conducted in English, when the soprano was in mid-career,